“I kinda… don’t know what to do any more…”
Koh wasn’t normally one to admit defeat, but he and the rest of his team were at a bit of a loss when it came to dealing with the colossal fire demon taking up most of their office. Koh considered himself quite good at grief counselling and helping those in need with words alone, but nothing had convinced Retvik to leave the corner he had squished himself into. In fact, Retvik hadn’t eaten anything, he hadn’t had anything to drink, he hadn’t slept, he hadn’t even moved or spoken for hours. The only thing Retvik had done was stare at the floor and occasionally allow a couple of tears to drip from his eyes.
And Kal had tried all sorts. They’d had all of the Thantir Decaylings come along and sit with him, they’d dragged Galyn and Vikalos into the tiny office to try and convince Retvik to at least get up and stretch his legs, they’d used their weak telepathy to work out what Retvik’s favourite things were and brought them to him. Retvik’s half-brother Elkay had spent an hour lying next to Retvik, going through a long list of reasons why Retvik was a good person and that he shouldn’t give up. They’d also told Retvik about their secret plan, that the team of tiny Decay Lords had quietly bought a plot of land and were working on building a fully fledged base for the Thantir, in a bid to give Retvik some hope or at least a distraction. Even more physical attempts to move Retvik hadn’t done anything.
Nothing had worked. Retvik had completely given up.
Admittedly, it was becoming easier to see why. Retvik’s partner Litvir was still missing, and Retvik still had no idea why Litvir had fled. The Phantai search parties had completed their search of the initial area and had picked up only a handful of clues, but what had sent Retvik over the edge was the discovery of parts of the ship Litvir had stolen. The ship’s tracking device in one area, and a data recovery box not too far away. Both ripped out violently from the ship by forces unknown.
Retvik hadn’t been told this directly. He’d overheard a conversation between Galyn and Soulblade. They had planned to keep this to themselves, until they had more information, but that plan had failed miserably. Retvik’s spirit had been completely broken. As far as he was concerned, he was completely alone. Nothing mattered any more.
The small amount of follow-up news hadn’t managed to sway Retvik. The search parties hadn’t found any major parts of the stolen ship, which meant it was still potentially in one piece. And they also hadn’t found any biological remains. That meant Litvir was maybe still alive. And considering that Litvir was a Decay Lord, a pretty powerful one with a normally rather strong desire to not die, this was a good sign.
Didn’t matter.
As far as Retvik was concerned, Litvir was gone forever, and, in some way, it was Retvik’s fault. Not directly his fault. From what the other local Psions could tell, Litvir had threatened Retvik and fled, but not before erasing his memories. The fact that Retvik couldn’t remember what happened him, but that wasn’t what had really hurt him the most.
This was the second time someone Retvik believed to be a close friend, a partner, had threatened him and disappeared. While Arkay never ran away, he’d been sedated and sent away, to get the help he needed. Arkay never got that help. And now Litvir needed help, and his disappearance meant he would most likely never get the help he needed either. In both situations, Retvik was blaming himself.
“I think we need something… relatable to tell him…” Tah clicked as he patted Koh on the back. “But you should take a break. Maybe some solitude will help.”
“We can’t let Retvik out of our sight. He’s a flight risk now.”
“He hasn’t moved in like three hours.”
“Tah, you SAID he was a flight risk. Because Retvik thinks his Trio’s name has dictated their future.”
Tah paused, then clicked again. “Yeah, that’s fair. Either way, Koh, you’ve also been here for three hours. Let me take over.”
“Why?”
“We’re robots, but our brains are organic. Sometimes we need to rest them. I’ll stay here for an hour, then I’ll call one of our brothers. We’ll take it in turns like we always do.”
Koh tutted, then glanced around the room. The rest of Kal were all nodding in agreement.
“This is dangerous.”
“Koh, you volunteered to enter a room with one of the beings that originally killed us. I can spend an hour in a room alone, alongside Retvik.”
Finally, Koh relented. He clomped out of the room, dragging his other siblings with him and closed the door. As they all left, Nuh shot Tah a quick telepathic message, saying that he’d be waiting outside, in case Tah needed him.
Tah buzzed to himself briefly, then sat down next to Retvik.
“I know you’re hurting, but we can’t leave you alone. I also know you don’t want to talk, so do you mind if I monologue for a bit?”
Retvik didn’t say anything. Tah didn’t expect him to. Tah decided to talk anyway. Maybe it would calm Retvik down. He doubted it though.
“I’ll be blunt, us six only recently realized that you and Litvir and Arkay, your relationship is way, way more complicated than the sibling stuff we understand. Anything related to romance just bounces off our heads. We somewhat guessed that an unfulfilled romance was going on between the three of you, based on what we’ve seen of Elkay and Teekay, but romance in general around here is very new. The old Thantir had no romance, apart from Seimeni being weird, and we always avoided her. Same applied to the Justar, the Metrum were as cold as we were. Never met any of the Ventra, apparently they were genuinely quite friendly before they were dragged to war, but as we’ve seen here, romance has literally only just returned to the Phantai, and that’s only because we helped…”
Tah paused. He’d already gotten off-topic. He admittedly couldn’t help it, Tah secretly liked rambling.
“You new Thantir though, you’re all much more romantic. Is that the right word? I don’t know. But you guys have proper nice relationships that make you happy, to the point that you made mean old Itaviir also want proper, nice relationships again. The romantic relationships that he stopped having because he was too busy running a sect and being… I think Galyn called it ‘going cold’? Either way, that’s all above us. For us six, we only have a sibling-based relationship, we’re physically incapable of anything more. Doesn’t mean we can try and understand, try and relate.
“Your relationship with Litvir is complicated. I don’t understand it. But I am 100% certain that right now, you’re blaming yourself for everything. I know because I’ve done the exact same thing.”
Tah tried to sigh. Being completely mechanical, doing so was impossible. So he clicked instead. Clicking and buzzing were the only natural, non-vocal sounds he could make. And Tah only really buzzed thanks to his electricity powers.
“I know pretty much all you new Thantir were all formerly mortal, apart from Arkay. And, I suppose, technically Phovos. You all kinda got swept up in your Life Goddess’s messes. You in particular. Weirdly enough, us six Cleanser Kal? Same thing. In fact, we were just a backup mechanism in case something happened to the Cleanser Queens.
“You see, our universe was pretty stupid. It didn’t have a nice yellow death god who helped recycle things so the snake lady and the giant whale could make new things. It had the Cleansers. Once existence reached the point that there were no new resources to be had, the Cleanser Hordes would wake up, destroy everything, scour the universe outside of designated survivors, then go back to sleep. They were lead by the Cleanser Queens, who, admittedly, did very little, but they were proper sentient beings, the Cleansers were just mindless drones.
“Except, this one time, a rounding error, a shadowy bastard and the unfortunate placement of life meant that the Cleanser Hordes woke up early. There was still plenty of life around. Normally, the Hordes would run unopposed, but no, a team of Imperators managed to seal away the Queens and the Hordes fell dormant.
“So the Cleanser Kal, us six, we woke up. We were a fail safe, designed to activate if the Queens were in danger. Our one single job was to free the Queens. We… didn’t manage it. We repeatedly failed.
“The worst failure was the first. We had no idea what we were getting into. We managed to neutralize the Imperators, but we left them otherwise unharmed. The logical beings that we were, we didn’t see them as a threat and didn’t waste energy harming them. Just as we were about to finish our job and free the Queens, we were force-fed our own powers by the Imperators and…”
Another pause. Tah had never really said this story out loud before.
“Well, we were essentially destroyed. The only parts of Gah, Nuh, Pah and Koh’s physical bodies that survived were their brains. Leh somewhat escaped via an explosion that blasted him off into space. Me? My electrical powers overloaded and I fried pretty much everything. Everything except my right eye and my internal consciousness. Eventually, Leh managed to get back, he restarted me and we made new bodies for the others and tried again.
“It probably took too many attempts. We were beaten down five more times. We didn’t know any better, we were just doing as we were programmed. In a universe where we all had predetermined destinies, we had no choice what so ever. And because we were programmed to neutralize, never kill, the many Imperators we faced would always defeat us. I don’t blame them though, they had their own destinies, they were just trying to protect themselves.
“After our sixth failure, we rebuilt ourselves again and decided to just go to sleep and wait. We calculated that the Ekinan-Beings and their Imperator defenders would eventually die off on their own. But something stopped us from waking up, and by the time we did wake up, way past the times we had calculated, literally everything was dead. Including the Cleanser Queens. This caused backup programming to kick in, and, at the demand of a being none of us can truly recall, we released the Cleansing Hordes and destroyed the entire universe.
“That would have been it, but the shadowy bastard at the end wasn’t happy. They cursed us, trapped us within our original broken bodies, permanently reminding us of our first defeat.”
Tah took a moment to look at Retvik. He seemed to be paying attention.
“I went on a pretty roundabout way to get to a rather short point. The first time we were beaten, I sat there in that cave, unable to move, staring at the corpses of my siblings, for a long time. And all I did was blame myself. I did everything I could have, but I failed. The endless helplessness tore me apart, and was made worse when Leh returned, because he also reactivated the others’ Krana-brains and they all blamed me and Leh for leaving them unconscious. That blame ate away at me. I lost sight of pretty much everything, I gave up my position as leader of the team, and, for many a year-string, I gave up my own body, in a bid to not feel that blame any more.
“That’s why I am so thankful for Vikalos introducing you to us, for interrupting our work and getting us to fix Arkay. You new Thantir saved us. It was basically a miracle.”
Tah clicked a little.
“The blame is eating you up right now. You don’t think anything matters any more. I understand. But we’ll hold on to your hope for you. As long as you need.”
Retvik took a deep breath. He remained silent, but he had been listening.
“I’ve talked long enough, I should probably give you a break. Still, we kinda can’t leave you on your own, so I’m going to just sit here for a bit. Is that okay with you?”
“Y-yes…” Retvik eventually stuttered.
“Alright. Let me know if you need anything.” Tah dimmed his eyes, then fell silent, giving Retvik some much deserved peace and quiet.